Extract from Mount Everest 1938 - Tillman's attempt to summit

Article

October 2016

H. W. ‘Bill’ Tilman was one of the greatest adventurers of his time, a pioneering climber and sailor who held exploration above all else. He made first ascents throughout the Himalaya, attempted Mount Everest, and sailed into the Arctic Circle. For Tilman, the goal was always to explore, to see new places, to discover rather than conquer. His writing represents some of the finest tales of adventure and discovery from the last century.

In Mount Everest 1938, following an unsuccessful British attempt on the summit in 1936, when war in Europe is imminent, the Tibetans grant the British one more permit, one more chance to climb the mountain. Tilman was the obvious choice to lead a select team made up of some of the greatest British mountaineers history has ever known, including Eric Shipton, Frank Smythe and Noel Odell.

Tilman writes that it is difficult to give the layman much idea of the actual difficulties of the last 2,000 feet of Everest. He returns to the high camp and, in exceptional style, they try for the ridge, the route to the summit and those immense difficulties of the few remaining feet.

By morning the gale of the night had died away, but it was not until eight o’clock that we considered it warm enough to make a start. (All times given, by the way, are relative and not absolute. It was eight o’clock by my watch, but by the sun it might have been seven or nine o’clock.) While waiting we dressed by putting on wind-proofs, and boots which had been kept more or less unfrozen in our sleeping-bags. The sun was still below the ridge but the morning was fine and calm except for what appeared to be a gentle zephyr from the west. In reality it may have been blowing hard for I suppose if the atmospheric pressure is only one-third of normal, wind strength is also reduced. On our arrival the previous afternoon I cannot say that the rock wall which we proposed climbing as the most direct way to the summit ridge had made a very good impression. Like boxers confidently announcing their victory on the eve of a fight we told each other it would ‘go’, comforting ourselves privately with the thought that rocks sometimes look worse than closer acquaintance proves them to be. But now, in the cold light of morning, as they looked still less prepossessing we decided not to waste time but to turn the wall on the right where it merged into the easier angle of the face, and where a shallow depression filled with snow led diagonally upwards to the summit ridge. As we moved slowly up the scree towards the right-hand end of the wall I kept changing my axe from one hand to the other thinking it was that which was making them so cold. But before we had been going ten minutes they were numb and I then began to realize that the gentle zephyr from the west was about the coldest blast of animosity I had ever encountered. I mentioned the state of my hands to Lloyd who replied that his feet were feeling very much the same. We returned to the tent to wait until it was warmer.

We made a second brew of tea and started again about ten o’clock by which time the sun had cleared the ridge, although it was not blazing with the extraordinary effulgence we should have welcomed. In fact at these heights the only power which the sun seems capable of exerting is that of producing snow-blindness. It was still very cold, but bearable. We skirted the snow lying piled at the foot of the wall and took a few steps along our proposed route, where Lloyd, who was in front, sank thigh-deep into the snow. I believe it was somewhere about here that Shipton and Smythe had tried. Without more ado we returned to the rocks. There seemed to be three or four possible ways up, but first we tried my favoured line of which Lloyd did not think very highly. It was one of those places which look so easy but which, through an absence of anything to lay hold of, is not. I did not get very far. A similar place was tried with like result and then we moved off to the left to see if there was any way round. This brought us to the extreme edge of the north ridge where it drops steeply to the gully coming down from the north-east shoulder. There was no way for us there. Retracing our steps along the foot of the wall Lloyd had a shot at my place which he now thought was our best chance; but he too failed. It was not really difficult; at least looking back at it now from the security of an armchair, that is my impression, but the smooth, outward-sloping rocks, covered in part by snow, very easily withstood our half-hearted efforts. I then started up another place which I think would have ‘gone’, although the first step did require a ‘shoulder’. Very inopportunely, while I was examining this our last hope, there was a hail from below and we saw Angtharkay, presently to be followed by Nukku, topping the slabs just below the tent. I had left word for him to come up with the oxygen load abandoned by the porter who had failed to reach Camp V with us. We wanted to have a word with him, and of course to go down to the tent was a direct invitation to go down altogether—a course which I am sorry to say was followed without any demur.

It will be a lasting regret that we never even reached the summit ridge, but I think the information we would have brought back had we reached it would have been mostly of negative value. From the point we were trying to reach close to the north-east shoulder, the Second Step is about 1200 yd. distant; the summit itself is a mile away, and 1500 ft. higher. The ridge, on which there was plenty of snow, did not look easy, while the Second Step looked really formidable; so much so that the only chance seemed to lie in the possibility of making a turning movement on the south face, which of course we could not see. The only reason for preferring the ridge route to Norton’s Traverse would seem to be when there is snow about; but since under such conditions the ridge itself is not easily attainable little remains to be said for it as an alternative route.

We descended to Camp V in a storm of snow and wind which made the finding of the best route a matter of difficulty. Kusang and Phur Tempa were still in residence. After some tea and an hour’s rest we started again at four o’clock for the Col. The Sherpas were roped together, while we went ahead making a track for them down the snow; but they went so slowly that we had constantly to wait for them. The storm had blown itself out and the evening was now calm and fine, so near the bottom we pushed on ahead leaving them to follow at their leisure. Amongst the crevasses at the foot of the ridge, where the storm had obliterated all old tracks, we had a discussion, about the right route, which threatened to be interminable until Lloyd settled the matter, or at any rate pointed out the wrong route, by falling into one; thus bringing an inglorious day to its appropriate conclusion. As we were unroped at the time, this slight mishap will possibly evoke neither surprise nor sympathy. In response to my inquiries a muffled cry from below assured me that he was unhurt and had not fallen very far; but as nothing could be done until the porters arrived with the rope, I had to leave the victim down there for a good ten minutes—possibly penitent, certainly cold. It should never happen, but if one does fall into a crevasse in free unfettered fashion (I speak from experience), as one does if the rope is not being worn, it is a question which feeling predominates—surprise, fear, or disgust at having been such an ass. I could see the Sherpas up the ridge and they could see me, but they neither heard my shouts nor took any notice of my gesticulations except to sit down once again and ponder at this new form of madness. At length one of them, who was possibly a better arithmetician than the others, must have totted up the number of Europeans who had left Camp V that afternoon and discovered that now there was one short. Down they came, and Lloyd was hauled out none the worse.

Only Odell, Oliver and seven porters remained at Camp IV as the others had gone down that morning by the old route to Camp III. Warren was obliged to go too in order to look after Ongdi who on his return from Camp VI had suddenly developed pneumonia; at least the symptoms pointed to pneumonia, but his recovery was so speedy that it may not have been. They went down by the old route because for a sick man that was the easier. Another Camp VI man, Pasang Bhotia, was lying there alone in a tent, sick. The first report was that he had gone mad for he was unable to articulate, but it soon became clear that his right side was completely paralysed and he was therefore incapable of movement. They had attempted to take him down that morning, but two sick men in one party were too many. The other Sherpas seemed rather to wish to shun him than to assist him in his piteous plight; he could neither dress himself, put on his boots, feed himself, talk, get out of his tent, nor even out of his sleeping-bag. They regarded this misfortune as a judgement, either on him or on the whole party, for supplicating too perfunctorily the gods of the mountain.

With this sick man on our hands, with some anxiety about the safeness of the descent, and since there was now no hope of climbing the mountain and the weather was not improving, we decided on the prudent course of going down. Oliver was keen to go to Camp VI, more for the sake of treading classic ground than for any good he could do. I sympathized, and was sorry to disappoint him, for dull indeed must be the man whose imagination does not quicken at the thought of treading that ground which in its short history of sixteen years has been the scene of so much high, even tragic endeavour.

You can buy 'Everest 1938' and other Tilman series books from Vertebrate Publishing.